Best Food Writing 2010

by Holly Hughes

  My mother has never made Yancey’s recipe, and neither have I. It’s a lot of trouble, and we’re all so busy, you know. But, determined to try at least once, on a chilly Saturday morning not long ago, I go down to the local butcher and have him boil and grind the meat—cheating already—and head home to soak the corn husks. I consult my mother. I consult one of my best friends, John Currence, a James Beard Award-winning chef, and Cesar Valdivia, a friend who owns a Mexican restaurant. It takes a village. My wife and I start making the paste and carefully spread it on the husks. We boil them, and the first two come apart, but the third holds its form.

  “It’s a tamale,” my wife says, as shocked as I.

  We keep trying, and the fourth is better than the third, and the fifth is better than the fourth. By the end, the things on the plate look like hot tamales and taste something like ‘em, too. But they are not Yancey’s tamales. The soul is missing, the little steps, his little tricks, the things that make food alive and not a list of bloodless steps that can be passed along via e-mail.

  The secrets to the tamales are in between the lines on the recipe card. They’re in the love, and in the expertise that comes only with practice. The recipe he passed down is vague, so vague it took a chef to fill in the blanks for me just to make it work, and I realize that the tamales lived in Yancey’s heart more than in his head. There is a truth in them that cannot be taught in words, something only learned from years of standing over a black iron pot behind the Valley Gin and staring down into the darkness.

  Once it’s gone, the past cannot be preserved, even in faithful blue script, and once the man who yelled “red hots!” died, and the depot where he yelled it stopped seeing trains and eventually became a library, once the fryers went silent in Clarksdale and the griddle got cold in Drew, once the song of Saturday afternoon found itself living inside a recipe card on my kitchen island, well, it was gone, gone, gone.

  COMPUTERS OR COOKBOOKS IN THE KITCHEN?

  By David Leite and Renee Schettler From leitesculinaria.com

  Recipes are the lifeblood of this award-winning website, the internet’s closest thing to a glossy foodie mag. The site’s publisher/editor-in-chief David Leite and deputy editor Renee Schettler spend their days poring over recipes—but, apparently, in diametrically opposed formats.

  He says: Come into our kitchen and you’ll find cookbooks gracing it. About three dozen of them tucked away on two shelves along one side of the cooking island, their bindings perfectly even (thanks to a ruler I frequently nudge up against them). But they’re cooking eunuchs, nothing more than decoration, as if we were selling the house and wanted to subtly convey to potential buyers the domestic pleasures awaiting them in those pages. The motherlode of books are found far away from the UXBZ (unexploded bomb zone) of the kitchen: In CT, that would be in my writing studio, and in NYC, the dining room. Plainly put: No sauces, tomato stains, or grease smudges will deface my books.

  So it’s curious that my laptop, which cost me three times my monthly mortgage, is what I bring into the kitchen when I cook.

  For me, comprehensiveness trumps logic. I know I should keep the computer miles away from the stove and my preternatural clumsiness. (I won’t even eat near my computer during the day.) But I just can’t stay away from everything the Internet has to offer while cooking. It’s like having my own personal Schlesinger Library’s Culinary Collection in my kitchen.

  Whether you like it or not, just about any recipe you want to make from just about any cookbook is online, somewhere. (Me, I like it.) And I like having Portable Leite Brain—what I call my laptop—handy because I rarely cook from just one recipe. I pull from three or four at once, and the last thing I want is piles of books on the counter. Plus I oftentimes cook from this site but am curious how other sites and blogs whip up, say, gougères or bavette, so I browse. And soon enough, I’m lost in that great, wonderful, frustrating worm hole of cyberspace. Along the way I pick up a few tips from Michael Ruhlman here, a video from Mark Bittman there, and sometimes even a new idea for tomorrow’s dinner.

  Then comes the ritual of the printing of the recipes and the taping to the cabinets (something The One hates, because I once pulled off paint when ripping them down after a particularly frustrating dinner). After the kitchen is kitted out, the computer isn’t out of reach—I never know when I might need more info, want to catch up on the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives” while onions sauté, or reply to Momma Leite, who likes to e-mail during the early evening.

  What can I say—I have cooking ADD.

  Of course, Portable Leite Brain’s being in the line of fire (sometimes literally) has prompted me to jury-rig it for safety. First, I never have it next to the stove, anymore. We won’t go there, but suffice it to say that I have a new laptop. I also cover the keyboard and screen with plastic wrap—kind of a giant computer condom, protecting it from all kinds of nasties.

  Now, the one place I never hesitate to bring my beloved books is the bedroom. There I luxuriate in their words and pictures and sometimes even fall asleep with a pile at my feet. I don’t know what that says about me or my relationship, but we’re not going there, either.—David Leite

  She says: If you could see the state of my cookbooks, you’d understand why I don’t take my laptop into the kitchen.

  It’s not that I’m intentionally careless or that my cookbook collection is mistreated terribly. It’s that I’m simply not the type of cook who can maintain the books in just-off-the-shelf condition. As my husband says, I really get into my cooking. I’m prone to what he describes as Seussian stacks of teetering pots and pans everywhere, and that’s not all. Chopping boards balance over the kitchen sink. All four burners blast aflame. The narrow ledge outside our window doubles as a makeshift cooling rack. Guests have been known to duck and dive, but for me, there’s a rhythm, albeit an occasionally discordant one. In the midst of this juggling act, there just isn’t a lot of time to be prissy about things like splashes and drips and splotches. If there’s a lull in the cooking, fine. Otherwise, it’s just too distracting.

  Even when I try, really try, to be careful, I just can’t seem to pull it off. Just ask David. The last time—and I do mean the last time—he loaned me a cookbook, I set it safely outside the kitchen. One stray, damp thumbprint was all it took to give my habits away. 18

  I wouldn’t dare take my electronics into that fray. Nor would I want to, practicality aside.You know how they say to use your bedroom only for sleep and, um, other bed-centric pursuits? I feel the same about my kitchen. I don’t want to read emails that other people feel are urgent while my eggs perfectly sunnyside up—soft, please—slip tragically into mediocrity. And I don’t want to interrupt everything to tweet 137 self-deprecating characters about the incident. Laptop as resource? Without a doubt. But not when I’m in the throes of cooking. I already did my homework, sussing out an ingredient substitution or summoning a technique online before I decide to stand facing the stove. If something comes up, I’ll deal with it on my own. When I’m in the kitchen, it’s time to cook. Anything else just messes up my mojo.

  So the closest my delicate, Meyer-lemon-averse Mac gets to the mess—and I to its distracting charms—is the wee wooden school-house chair in the foyer, just outside our galley kitchen. With my laptop’s volume cranked, I can ponder deep thoughts from “All Things Considered” or croon off-key to Ella while otherwise considering things cooking-related.

  As far as I’m concerned, perhaps the best use of technology in the kitchen is to photocopy a recipe in order to keep a book out of harm’s way. Yet I’m a sucker for the sentient pleasures related to cooking from a book, which explains why my cookbooks are a mess in the first place. I need the soothing white space around the edge of the page in order to dance a duet with the ingredients in my imagination. I spend those idle moments waiting for a stock to burble lost in the lyrical headnotes of Judy Rodgers. And I learn every time my husband leans over my shoulder to eye an open cookbook to make pithy comments
about the writing style, urge me to take more liberties with the ingredients, or muse over recipes that may be more to his liking.

  They’re not just cookbooks. They’re scrapbooks of sorts. Telltale translucent stains from melted butter both grease and grace my mom’s binder of go-to recipes. I continue her legacy with a blemish here (a smear of cilantro that escaped my maiden molcajete run with a Peppercorn-Coriander Root Flavor Paste) and a batter-splattered page there (the incomparable Laurie Colwin channeling Katherine Hepburn’s brownies in a decades-old issue of Gourmet). Though the perfectionist in me sometimes cringes, I don’t mind the splotches that shout out those memories, moments that probably wouldn’t exist had the recipes blinkered onscreen. I don’t mind them at all.—Renee Schettler

  DOES A RECIPE NEED TO BE COMPLICATED TO BE GOOD?

  By Monica Bhide From www.monicabhide.com

  In her cookbooks, such as Modern Spice, Monica Bhide updates traditional Indian cooking for a modern kitchen—translations that usually involve simplifying multi-step, multi-ingredient recipes. After pushback from some readers, she reflects on her strategy for doing so.

  I was so proud of my cookbook, Modern Spice. That is, until the moment a reader approached me at a fundraiser. “Your recipes are too simplistic,” she blurted out. It threw me for a loop—too simplistic? I developed Modern Spice keeping contemporary peoples’ busy schedules in mind. My focus was to create and share recipes that did not sacrifice on taste but delivered on the “ease of preparation” promise.

  The reader who approached me said that she had prepared my pan-seared trout with mint-cilantro chutney, but feared it wasn’t really cooking because it was so simple. At first, I felt I had failed her. I wondered if I should apologize. Had I been unworthy of my readers’ trust? Had I let them down?

  I probed her a little, and her response surprised me even more. She loved the dish, and so did everyone who ate it. But it did not fulfill her cooking aspirations. “Indian cooking is supposed to be hard,” she said. “And this book made it seem easy. That isn’t real Indian cooking, right?”

  Wait—isn’t being able to cook something that’s pleasing the point of a good cookbook? Does a recipe need to be complicated to be good?

  I think what isn’t necessarily obvious to many who read and cook from cookbooks is that creating simple recipes is often more difficult than creating complex ones. Conjuring a recipe that relies on only a few ingredients yet sends your taste buds into an orgasmic frenzy takes a great deal of understanding of ingredients: how they work individually, how to make them work together in perfect harmony, and how to cook them just right. It takes years of experience to learn, and to be able to teach, “simplicity.” And that is my goal as a cooking teacher and a cookbook author—to teach students to be able to cook on their own.

  It takes a lot of experience to prepare “simple” just right. In simple recipes with just a few ingredients, there’s no place to hide. It takes guts—and culinary prowess—to cook that way. Please be aware that when I refer to simplicity in recipes, I don’t mean dumbing down recipes. Yes, there are plenty of people who promise that our lives will be easier if we follow their “simple” plan to combine the contents of five tin cans for a meal. To me, that’s a false economy of time and money, not to mention flavor.

  My parents taught me how to cook—how to smell a melon, peel an onion, sear a fish, sizzle cumin. But most importantly, it was with them that I learned why freshness in ingredients matters so much and how a perfectly ripe tomato needs nothing more than a sharp knife to bring out its best. I grew up without a can opener in the house. My parents bought all their ingredients fresh. The only time I remember there being canned anything on the table was when my father fell in love with British baked beans and brought home several cans each time he traveled to London.

  Instead, I grew up with spices and herbs—our recipes would be considered incomplete without them—and yet I never remember my mother using ten different spices in a dish. A few in the right combination always did the trick. I once received an e-mail from a reader who was really angry that one of my recipes for tea included only one spice. “Are you afraid of spices?” he demanded. On the contrary: If you know how much flavor a single good-quality spice—say, cardamom—can add, why would you add flavors that muck it up?

  So what exactly constitutes a simple recipe? To me, it is a recipe that requires just a few ingredients, is smart in the way it uses those ingredients, doesn’t require my entire paycheck, and teaches me something. New York Times food reporter Kim Severson wrote a piece a year or so ago on “deal-breakers” in recipes, in which she decried a particular recipe for requiring fresh pig’s blood and another for demanding fleur de sel from buckets of seawater. Not happening in my kitchen.

  Ask someone what their favorite dish is to make at home and rarely will they announce foie grais with bacon air, mint puree, and pine nut confit. Most times you will hear squash soup, light-as-air buttermilk pancakes, mom’s recipe for lasagna. Yes, there is great joy in going to a restaurant and enjoying a complicated meal cooked by a legend like Daniel Boulud. But cooking at that level at home each and every day is neither possible nor desirable for most of us. I have kids, and as the Boston Globe so kindly put it, my recipes are “clearly the work of a mother cooking on weeknights.” Even so, I bet Chef Boulud would agree with me that good recipes come from learning how to use ingredients wisely.

  A chef who masters this art of simplicity is José Andrés. I recently prepared a recipe of his for slender stalks of asparagus bound together with thinly sliced Spanish ham and pan-fried. That was it: Asparagus. Ham. Pan-fry. Why is this notable? Those of you who know Andrés will know. Those of you who aren’t familiar with him, let me tell you. José Andrés is an understudy of Ferran Adria, and he is a chef who regularly thrills at culinary innovation, who can desconstruct a glass of wine on a plate and who can wrap a drop of olive oil in sugar. But he is also a husband and a father who clearly understands the role of a home cook as well as his role as a cookbook author and teacher. He demonstrates this with an ability to show readers what they can make at home WITHOUT a nitrogen tank handy.

  Should José’s great-tasting asparagus recipe have made me feel like I wasn’t cooking?

  Cooking teacher and great TV chef Sanjeev Kapoor, who has sold millions of books, once told me that true culinary genius lies in knowing how to teach people to master dishes that they can easily create at home. It does not, he continued, lie in showing off what the chef knows. The scale of complexity in recipes is in no way a litmus test of how good or bad a recipe is.

  So I leave you with this recipe for pan-fried trout with mint-cilantro chutney. And I say with great pride—simplicity is its charm.

  Pan-Seared Trout with Mint-Cilantro Chutney

  If you are reading this recipe and thinking, “Really, can it be that simple?”—yes, it is, and it is simply delicious. Don’t take my word for it, though. Get a pan out and start searing! Julie’s notes: Good substitutes for the trout are cod, snapper and tilapia.

  Serve the trout with a drizzle of the Mint-Cilantro Chutney.

  Serves 4

  Prep/Cook time: 15 minutes

  4 skin-on trout fillets, about 6 ounces each, halved lengthwise

  Table salt

  Freshly ground black pepper

  1 tablespoon vegetable oil

  ¼ cup Mint-Cilantro Chutney

  1. Season the trout fillets with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When the oil begins to shimmer, add the trout, skin side down. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Flip over and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes, until the trout is cooked through.

  3. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels, skin side down.

  4. Place each fillet on a serving plate and drizzle each with up to a tablespoon of chutney. Serve immediately.

  Mint-Cilantro Chutney

  This is the most popular chutney in India, hands down. It can be found in many Indian-Ameri
can homes, in restaurants, and now in jars on grocery store shelves. Its charm lies in how simple it is to prepare. My father always adds a little yogurt to his chutney to make it creamy and then pairs it with lamb kebabs. My mom-in-law adds a hearty dose of roasted peanuts and serves it with savory snacks; Mom adds pomegranate seeds—you get the idea—to each his own. This versatile chutney has so many uses. Thin it a little and use it as a salad dressing for a crisp green salad; use it in the consistency provided here as a spread on a baguette topped with fresh cucumber slices; or simply drizzle it on some freshly grilled fish for a fresh flavor. One word of advice here: Green chutneys have a short shelf life. Make them in small batches and make them often—they only take a few minutes but the rewards are well worth the effort (which really isn’t much). Julie’s notes: I did use the optional serrano chile with some of the seeds, but I did not use the optional dried pomegranate.

  Makes 1 cup

  Prep time: 5 minutes

  1 cup packed cilantro (leaves and stems)

  1 cup packed mint (leaves only, please)

  1 green serrano chile (optional; if you don’t like too much

  heat, remove the seeds)

  ¼ small red onion, peeled and sliced

  1 tablespoon dried pomegranate seeds (optional)

  2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

  ½ teaspoon table salt

  Up to 2 tablespoons water